Our favourite digital workplace and intranet blog posts from 2019

2019 was another very busy and successful year for Content Formula, and were already excited about what 2020 has to offer. Through 2019 on this blog we published multiple posts on the digital workplace, intranets, SharePoint, Office 365, Wizdom, Microsoft Teams automation and more. We hope you found them useful in helping you think about your approach to your own digital workplace or intranet and the opportunities there are to drive business benefits. In case you missed some of the articles, heres a round-up of some of our favourite and most popular articles of 2019.

1. January

   Thirteen ways to drive the adoption of Microsoft Teams The rapid growth of Microsoft Teams has been notable, with many organisations launching it as the cornerstone of departmental, project and team collaboration. In this comprehensive post we look at some of the ways that digital workplace teams can help drive adoption of the MS Teams; it covers everything from using peer-to-peer recommendations to integrating MS Teams into your intranet to making  sure there is proper governance in place. The article is a good starting point to get you thinking about your MS Teams adoption strategy.

2. February

   Webinar video Driving business productivity with PowerApps, Micosoft Teams and SharePoint Office 365 and MS Teams provides exciting opportunities to drive business productivity and raise efficiency with tangible business benefits. The potential integrations between PowerApps, Teams and SharePoint bringing workflow, collaboration and content together are exciting in themselves, but you can even start to bring other non-Microsoft apps into the equation. In this highly practical webinar Dan Hawtrey, John Scott and Joe Perry look at the art of the possible, particularly relating to adding apps to MS Teams , and making it a window into your wider digital workplace.

3. March

   How intranet and digital workplace governance is hard-baked into Wizdom Weve seen the importance of governance in virtually all intranet and digital workplace projects weve been involved in. You need the right policies, processes and rules to make everything work properly and keep your digital workplace under control, ultimately benefitting your users. In this post we look at how Wizdoms intranet supports four different flavours of governance including strategic, technical, collaboration and content governance, ensuring the product works with your digital workplace strategy rather than against it.

4. April

   What is the Microsoft Graph and how can it help you? The Office 365 universe of tools, services and applications continues to expand and evolve at a remarkable rate. To help our customers keep up to date Joe Perry has produced a series of informative and non-technical articles that give the low-down on different corners of Office 365 and the opportunities that they present. In April, Joe gave us a deep dive into the Microsoft Graph, covering why its exciting and how it can help create apps, improve personalised searching and enhance the Office 365 experience. Its everything you wanted to know about Microsoft Graph but were afraid to ask!

5. May

   16 ways you can integrate Office 365 functionality into your intranet Here at Content Formula we love intranets and Office 365. We see intranets very much as a key component of the digital workplace, with a SharePoint Online intranet an opportunity to leverage and expose Office 365 functionality in order to improve business processes, increase usability and drive adoption of tools. This article is a powerful list of sixteen specific use cases where intranets can integrate Office 365 tools; it includes everything from using Yammer as your intranet commenting engine to using chatbots to provide a personal concierge service! Its a great starting point to consider improvements that will increase the value of your intranet and demonstrate ROI on your Office 365 investment.

6. June

   Webinar video: The future of Office 365 and SharePoint intranets To say the Office 365 and SharePoint intranets space is fast moving is an understatement. Microsoft continue to invest in tools that impact intranets while the in-a-box market is still buoyant, with   products like Wizdom adding new game-changing features. In this webinar Dan Hawtrey and Joe Perry partnered up with leading Office 365 and intranet authority Sam Marshall from ClearBox to round-up all the latest developments and announcement. They also consider the kind of questions that ClearBox and Content Formula customer are asking, including whether you should buy or build your intranet.

7. July

   Should smaller companies choose SharePoint Modern out of the box or Wizdom for their intranet? Microsofts investment in intranet-ready features for SharePoint Online means that for smaller companies a SharePoint modern intranet solely based on out-of-the-box features is increasingly becoming a viable option. In this post we explore the advantages and disadvantages of using SharePoint Online straight out of the box or using an in-a-box product like Wizdom. We also cover why larger companies with more complex needs may find they need to rely on a product or customisation to get the intranet that works best for them.

8. August

   What is PowerApps and how can  I use it? OK, this actually came out in late July, but its a great article and we wanted to mention it again! Here Joe Perry writes another of his articles that demystifies the Office 365 suite, this time focusing on PowerApps. He covers its features, the way it works and popular use cases; he also glances into the future and look at the powerful capabilities that are on the immediate product roadmap.

9. September

   Webinar video: Modernise your intranet with an intelligent people directory When LiveTiles acquired Wizdom it introduced new opportunities for Content Formula to introduce great new tools to our clients. One of these is an AI-powered people directory bot that helps to automate the population of Office 365 profiles, an area that is traditionally challenging for digital workplace teams. The bot (previously branded as Hyperfish) is the star of this webinar video led by John Scott and Alex Lustig; the webinar explores how the tool can help you and provides a detailed product demo. If you find people profile completion a headache, watch this!

10. October

    Fifteen essential elements that should be on your intranet governance checklist Were strong believers in governance essentially these are the elements that can stop your intranet from failing.  If you dont have governance on your intranet content can grow stale, findability suffers and trust erodes. In this article we updated our popular governance checklist to cover the fifteen essential elements that should be of your governance framework. Its a handy list for anybody planning a governance framework or trying to fill in the gaps; we also explore the thinking behind it, looking at the reasons why intranets fail.

11. November

    Ten reasons why a SharePoint or SharePoint Online intranet is your best intranet option SharePoint still provokes a strong reaction in some people, not always positive. Bu if youre coming back to SharePoint or SharePoint Online and youre considering building an intranet, its pretty much a no-brainer. SharePoint or SharePoint Online is easily your best option for an intranet and this article explores why we believe this is the case. In our view, nothing really matches SharePoints flexibility to be both a content platform and digital workplace, support of different use cases,  opportunities to integrate with Office 365 and more. If youre reviewing platforms or want to make a robust business case for a SharePoint intranet then this is useful reading.

12. December

    Wizdom Intelligent Intranet by LiveTiles leads the way in the ClearBox SharePoint Intranet 2020 report The leading (and only) guide to SharePoint intranet in-a-box products is published by ClearBox in the UK. Each year it covers the strengths and weaknesses of the vast array of SharePoint intranet products including Wizdom by LiveTiles; its a must-read for anybody wanting to make an informed decision about acquiring intranet software. We were very pleased to see that Wizdom had received a great product review in the latest ClearBox report. This interesting article explores what ClearBox said about the platform.

Keep on reading Through 2020 were going to be keeping on publishing articles and posts on intranets, digital workplaces and Office 365. We hope you find them useful and keep on reading. Happy new year!